It s not too late
by KatheMS
Summary: The sneaky eyes, the text messages, they made him feel like an adolescent, because what had started as a meaningless desire to have sex with a coworker had transformed into the most beautiful love.


Thanks to thexxit for wanting to review this weird story.

I hope you all like this. It's very AU ...

 **It's not too late**

To have her there on the other side of the table in a boring meeting of the department they were assigned to was exciting.

The sneaky eyes, the text messages, they made him feel like an adolescent, because what had started as a meaningless desire to have sex with a coworker had transformed into the most beautiful love, the kind you feel when you're a child and you believe that the person you've devoted your heart to is a fairy tale princess that life had reserved just for you, a loyal partner who will always be there, despite the sin of being in love while both of you are married to others...

Marriages that were going nowhere, but marriages never the less...

Although, right now, neither one of them knew why they had made the mistake of marrying the characters that were with them in their houses every night.

"Jack's out of town tonight and we argued, so he won't be expecting to me to call, can we meet?" she wrote to him.

"Of course! I can't wait. Diana doesn't have to know that the case I'm working on is actually Peterson's. When we get out of here, we can make the arrangements," he answered.

"Hmmm... If we ever get out of this hell of a meeting," she wrote back, without the slightest regret of knowing that, once again, she would cheat on her husband.

* * *

When evenings like that night that happened, when making love to him was so perfect, that was when she convinced herself that this wasn't a sin, that this wasn't lust, that this was love and what she had at home was simply routine, a routine she needed to escape from.

"What can you possibly be thinking about right now?" His voice interrupted her thoughts.

She looked at him, kissed him and smiled at him.

"About you, about us, about how perfect we are together... about how good we are... at this," she said looking down at both of their naked bodies on the hotel room bed.

He hugged her. "Are you sure?" he insisted.

The sound of a cellphone broke the moment.

"Scully," she answered. "Oh! Yes... No, I haven't forgotten, how could I?... Yes, I'm on my way to your place… Bye." She hung up.

The agent left the cellphone on the table beside the bed and returned to her lovers arms.

"I'm sorry Mulder... I have to go," she said.

"So I heard. I thought you told me that you had the night off?" he asked, a bit of anger in his words.

"I'm sorry. I forgot that Frank and I haven't finished our report and, apparently, I agreed to go to his house to finish it," she explained.

Suddenly he got up from the bed and went to the bathroom. She sighed and followed him.

"Baby…" she called. He was already taking a shower and she decided to join him.

"We haven't been together in a month, Scully, and just on the night we can finally be with each other it turns out that you have made a work appointment." There was no denying how upset he was. Scully then decided to leave him alone in the bathroom and get dressed.

When Mulder was like this it was best not to give him any explanations, because he wouldn't accept them. Five minutes later, he got out of the shower and she was half dressed, trying to do something nice with her hair in front of the mirror.

"Mulder," she called for him when she saw him leave the bathroom. "I can't call Frank and cancel the appointment, the report is due tomorrow. The mistake was mine for telling you during the meeting that we could be together tonight." She was trying to explain the situation while walking towards him.

"... I'm sorry for acting like that. It's been a difficult month for both of us, at work and at home, but it's just that your are my happiness, Scully, and... we haven't been together that much recently," he said.

It broke her heart to see him like that. Sometimes she forgot that in front of her, he wasn't that cold and fierce man, the star of the FBI, who resolved cases even with his hands tied.

In front of her, he was just a desperate man, trapped in a marriage with no direction, who had found in her absolute happiness, just like she had in him.

"I promise it won't take long. Wait for me here if you want…." she told him while hugging him. "I want to feel again the way you just made me feel, such a delicious feeling," she said with a naughty smile. He was about to answer her gesture with a smirk of his own but, suddenly, a shadow was upon him when he heard his cellphone ring.

He got away from Scully to reach the device and see who it was... Diana.

"Is it her?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, leaving the phone on the bed.

"Didn't you say she knew you were working?" she asked stepping away from him so she could finish getting dressed.

"Yes, but I don't know, maybe she broke a nail and wants me to come over and help her polish it," he said while getting dressed too.

"I hate that she calls you when you're with me."

"But you can answer your husband's messages, right?" he replied.

She turned to look at him, her infamous eyebrow high up at the sky, and a bad temper starting to invade her. "You know very well that if I answer him it is because he thinks I'm at the house," she said, and with that she put on her shoes, took her jacket and walked to the door.

"You know, Mulder? There are times when I think we should have left things as simply as they were when we started, merely as casual sex parters," she said and walked out.

Inside of the room where just minutes ago they shared one of the most amazing orgasms either of them had ever felt, he stood in the middle of it, half dressed, full of anger, but not at her, not even after hearing to those painful words, but at himself for being the jackass who led her to say them.

When was he going to understand than in this sick but beautiful relationship he now had with his coworker he was always going to be the one losing and he didn't have the right to say a thing about it. His thoughts were interrupted when his phone started to ring... Diana… again.

"Hi Diana," he said. How long had it been since he said a kind word to her? He didn't even remember anymore. She didn't answers his greeting so he knew she must be angry with him. "Diana, when I get home you can insult me as much as you want, ok?" he said and hang up the phone.

* * *

 _Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why am I still with him? Two years already and he's not ending his marriage and neither am I... and we're not going to. Our thing is a "secret" very well known in the office, and even our coworkers must know for sure that we have something going on. What difference would it make to confirm it? But he's so possessive, so intense, so strange, so unpredictable... I don't know if I could live with that…._

She should pay more attention to the road and less to her thoughts. He was her lover and that was that. The emotional love they claimed to feel for each other was simply an illusion, a dream, they simply - and wrongly - convinced themselves of it.

Her cellphone was ringing. Jack was calling.

"Hey, sweetheart," she said, trying to get Mulder out of her thoughts.

"Hi princess, how are you? I called home but you didn't answered and I got worried."

Scully was surprised and a bit in shock. She wasn't expecting her husband to call their house. Did he suspect anything?

"I had to go out, honey. I'm driving to Frank's to finish the report for our latest case." At least this time she wasn't lying.

"Baby and why didn't you ask him to go to our house; it's really late."

She smiled. "Oh Jack, I'm a FBI agent, I've been out later than this in the streets, and, well, I thought it wouldn't be a good idea for the neighbours to see a man entering our home on the very night you're not there," she said, a bit uncomfortable.

This was weird. Wasn't he supposed to be angry at her about the argument they had in the morning?

"Hmmm, you're right. I just wanted to call you to let you know that I'm very sorry about this morning. We're spending a lot of money on couple's therapy to waste it on a fight."

Scully became even more uncomfortable as she tried to keep her mind on the road.

"Thank you Jack, you're right. I don't want to be mad at you either," she lied. She already had lost track of how many lies she'd told.

"I hope this time alone helps you think more clearly about that subject because I want to discuss it again, without a fight, when I return."

A bomb had just exploded above Scully's head in that moment. Again with the talk about having a baby. She sighed and that long moment of silence made Jack understand that it wouldn't be easy.

"Just think about it Dana. There's a life outside the FBI, and there can be children and a real family in that life."

She had to hang up the phone if she wanted to make it alive to her partner's house.

She couldn't keep driving while she listened to her husband talk about her quitting the FBI, about having children and, at the same time, think about Mulder…. Damn it! She was so in love with him, it could be a big inconvenience sometimes.

"Dana?" Jack interrupted her thoughts.

"Yes… fine Jack, I'll think about it, but I won't promise anything…." she said approaching her partner's house.

"I'll settle for that, with you thinking about it. Have a good night princess, I hope you don't stay out too late," he said.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine. Take care. I'll see you in two days," she said and hung up before he could speak another word.

* * *

"Love, beautiful, please, answer me."

She could read the text message on her phone, but she didn't know if she could reply to it.

To do so would be to keep twirling on that vicious circle. But she loved him, she couldn't fool herself and so she had no choice but to decide a long time ago that she would keep twirling on that vicious circle, as long as she was with Mulder.

"Dana, please..." One more text.

She was already home, on her bed, wishing to have him by her side.

She would never understand the great power this man had on her, the same man that could make her reach an orgasm by just talking really close to her ear while caressing her back and giving her short, hot kisses on the back of her neck. Just remembering those moments made her forget everything and she grabbed her phone.

"Hello," she wrote.

"Thanks for answering me. How are you?" he said.

"Fine. I got home recently, I'm tired. Frank has his daughter sick, so I had to do the report by myself," she sent the text.

"I'm sorry beautiful," he wrote back. "Dana, I'm..."

"How can you be texting me at this hour?"

Both messages arrived at the same moment.

She decided to ignored his attempt of an apology and waited for him to answer.

"I'm at my office. Diana took her sleeping pills, so there's no problem."

Scully felt so uncomfortable. Just to read that woman's name made her feel rage.

"Mmmmm," she wrote.

"Can you forgive me?" he said.

She couldn't help a smile... Again, that power over her.

"You know I do... I love you," she wrote.

"And I love you, beautiful. I love you," he replied.

A tear went down her face. That goddam word said to her, "beautiful," it always had the same effect.

"I wish I was with you right now," he said.

"It's always about sex with you," she said, wiping out her tears.

"You know is not like that Dana. I just want to be with you, I miss you," he wrote.

She sighed. Who was she kidding? Why did she bother if he mentioned sex so much if she was dying to be in bed with him too?

"I miss you too, Mulder," she wrote.

But she had to leave romance aside, because she had to have "that" conversation with him.

"Do you have time to lunch with me tomorrow?" she asked.

"Yes, of course. I was just going to ask you the same," he said. "Is something the matter?" he asked.

"Yes... Jack called me on my way to Frank's. He's insisting on the baby thing…." She hesitated about sending the text, but she had to be honest.

A long moment of silence. Oh oh! She had awakened the beast inside of him.

"Mulder?" she dared to ask.

"Why do you need to talk to me if it looks like you already made a decision?" he said.

There it was, the answer she was expecting.

"Let's talk tomorrow, Mulder. Remember that I love you," she wrote.

She pictured him at his house. Lying on his couch in his office, hitting the cellphone against his head to finally react and write...

"I love you too, beautiful."

... And make her melt on her bed and go to sleep with a smile.

* * *

Scully had never understood why if she Mulder weren't partners, although they were assigned to the same department, their desks were facing each other at the office, instead of, maybe, having Frank in front of her.

Things like that were the ones that made her think that it wasn't only on her mind, that life truly wanted them together.

On that morning he was late and she was already leaving to her superior's office to present the case report with her partner. Exactly when Frank told her it was time to go, Mulder walked into the office: a big space with at least 10 desks where she had spent the last 7 years of her life, after she left her job as an instructor at Quantico to become a field agent.

He was already in that office, five years before her, after the department he and... Diana Fowley, his wife, ran was closed. They both were on The X Files until a lack of funding caused the FBI shut down the division. After that, Mulder went to the same department Scully would later get assigned to and Diana - Agent Fowley - became a professor at Georgetown University two years ago, exactly when Mulder and Scully discovered they were soul mates.

"Good morning beautiful," he said in a whisper when she walked by his side, leaving the office.

The surprise of hearing him calling her that in the office caused her to stop in her tracks and she couldn't help but to look at him and give him that smile that she very well knewn he loved.

"Good morning, Agent Mulder," she said.

She was focused on her computer, checking some facts of the case that she was working on now, when a pair of strong arms surrounded her. It was him.

"Mulder, what are you doing?" she asked, surprised by his reckless action.

"The office is empty and you're so focused that you didn't even notice. Or the fact that it is one o'clock in the afternoon and I've been sitting for an hour in front of you waiting to go to lunch with you," he said, still hugging her.

"I'm sorry, but Frank left me alone with the case because his little girl got worse and they had to take her to the hospital," she answered.

"Oh! That's not good... Well, if you prefer I can go and get you something to eat so you don't have to stop working."

Always thinking about her, always so considerate, always so in love with him...

"No baby…."

Baby. She had never called him that in the office. This was getting bigger and she didn't know if she was about to kill it.

"...Mulder," she corrected. "... Let's go. I need to get out of here," she said with a smile and got up.

* * *

It wasn't what they would have planned, but the thought of having lunch on the stairs of Lincoln Memorial sounded perfect when he proposed it.

They were a bit far away from the FBI building, but the walk and the sun light would be good for her, despite her high heels and the hot pant suit she was wearing. The walk warmed her, so much so that as soon as they reach one of the steps at the Memorial, Scully immediately took off her jacket and her shoes.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you walk," he said taking her by her hand.

For some strange reason they had never been scared of being seeing alone together on the street by anyone who could think something about the fact that he was taking her hand on a very affectionate way.

"No, my love. You know I love walking with you," she said with a smile. They sat down and started to eat their lunch.

Some time later, when people were heading back to their business, lunch time over for most of them, Scully felt it was time to broach the delicate subject they needed to discuss.

"Mulder…" she started.

"Yes?" he said back.

"Jack insisted last night that we discuss the subject of children," she said, her eyes on her feet.

"You told me. What did you say to him?" he asked, searching for her eyes.

"That I would think about it." Finally she had the courage to look at him. "I don't know how to keep avoiding the subject. He's been insisting on it for months now and I guess it's normal, we've been married for seven years, that's a long time with no kids," she tried to explain.

Now he was the one hiding his eyes.

"You're going to have to say yes," he stated.

Scully didn't expect that answer.

"What did you say? How could you say that? Do you want to end this?" she asked, trying to control her tears.

Mulder took her by the hand and kissed her.

"Scully, I'm so in love with you that I would be capable of still being with you while you're pregnant with someone else's child," he said.

She couldn't believe his words.

"You're crazy." It was all she could say at the moment. "Do you think I would allow that? It wouldn't be fair to you," she added.

"I don't care about what's fair and what's not anymore, as long as I'm with you," he said, with something that looked like a smile on his face.

She couldn't believe it. He loved her so much he would do that?

"You've never asked me to leave him…." she said all of a sudden, her eyes again on the steps.

"Neither have you," he answered.

"Would you?" she replied right back.

But the silence between them was enough for an answer.

It was time for her to leave. She hated that silence, that answer, she hated him at that moment for being such a coward, for having that ridiculous fear of leaving Diana to take a risk to be happy with her, but she hated herself even more for even considering having a child with a man she didn't love instead of being honest and leaving that empty life behind.

She put on her shoes, stood up, picked up her jacket and the bag with the garbage from their lunch. She started to walk down the stairs while he stayed behind, regretting his silence.

"Dana!" he finally called her.

She turned around and waited for him to approach her. But on her face there wasn't a smile, not even a little bit of love, just sadness.

"He wants me to quit the FBI and then he wants to have a baby," she said all of the sudden.

He wasn't expecting that. She turned around, she was going to leave again and was going to leave him alone. But no, she regretted the action, and was in front of him one more time.

"Two years of this relationship, Mulder, in a few months it will be three and we have never ask each other to leave our spouses. Why?" she asked with so much sadness that he couldn't help but to hug her right there on the street, in front of anybody. But she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"Answer me!" she demanded. Enough to with his silence.

"If I ask you, would you do it? Would you leave him?"

She wasn't expecting that question and, honestly, didn't know how to answer it.

"You don't have to answer me, Scully, I know the answer. You're thinking about having a child with him, you brought me here to let me know that you have decided that and now you want me to ask you to leave Jack?" he said raising his voice.

She took a deep breath, realizing how right Mulder was. But she didn't want for things to end up in that terrible way.

She got closer to him, so close that kissing him would be very easy at that moment. In the park they were practically alone, so there wouldn't be anybody close to them to notice the unusual closeness between the agents.

"Ask me, Mulder. Ask me to leave him," she said.

A cellphone started to ring. She jumped with the sound of it and the vibration inside her pocket.

"Scully," she answered without looking at Mulder.

"Leave him," he said right at that moment.

How did he know it was Jack calling, when she didn't even know because she hadn't checked the caller ID. Her voice got lost at the attempt of saying hello to her husband on the other side of the line.

"Leave him and you'll know what I'm capable of. You'll see the extent I'll go for you," Mulder said again.

He grabbed from her had the bag with garbage from their lunch and walked away to throw it out, giving her space to deal with her husband.

"I can't talk to you right now, Jack," she said, saying goodbye to that politically correct woman who for seven years had endured a fake marriage. She hung up, put the cellphone away and walked to Mulder.

Without a word, care free, without a secod thought about it, about who might be around to find out about them, she kissed him, her coworker, her lover, her friend, the love of her life, the one who was living that sickening but perfect relationship with her, that relationship only the two of them could endured, those soul mates who met late but could survive any struggle to find their own time to finally be together, forever.

"I wasn't expecting that," he said. "Not for our first public kiss to be next to a garbage can."

She smiled, as always, him making fun of everything, that characteristic, similar on both of them, that had brought them together two years ago.

"You know how much I like to be original," she answered with a wide smile.

But it was time to leave mockery aside and get back to reality. She took a deep breath and dare to ask.

"Would you leave her?" she asked, taking him by his hands.

"I did it last night…."

Scully couldn't believe what she was hearing and she almost lost her balance with the news. But before she bombarded him with a thousand questions, he kept speaking.

"I lied to you. Last night she wasn't sleeping thanks to the pills like I told you... I was alone at the house," he said.

Scully was even more confused. It was time to get back to the office, but time didn't matter to her at the moment, and a simple look made him understand that. They walked to a bench and Mulder began to explain everything.

"What you told me before leaving the hotel room hurt me so much, but it opened my eyes, beautiful. You are extremely important to me, you are my life, and I couldn't just make a hot body out of you, you couldn't just be the thing that gives me pleasure from time to time," he said and looked how her tears were beginning to stream.

"I'm so sorry about that," she said.

"On the contrary," he interrupted her. "I'm grateful because your words opened my eyes. And if a moment ago I went on mute it was because I didn't know how to tell you I had done this. I saw you so determined to have a baby with Jack that I didn't know at the moment if you were as willing as I was to leave him, but now, because of my silence, I was going to lose you again and I couldn't let that happen," he said.

She was in tears, she had never cry so much in front of him, but at the same time, she have never felt so happy, so free, even though she was still wearing another man's wedding ring.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she said, unable to hide her smile. She didn't remember the last time she felt this happy.

"What? Be happy?" he said kissing her hands.

She nodded. She couldn't find any words among so much happiness.

"Yes, be happy," she answered and gave him a hug. "I'm only going to ask you one thing," she said pulling herself free from his arms.

"What?" he asked.

"Don't ask me to leave the FBI," she smiled.

He couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"How could I? And to lose the opportunity of kissing my girlfriend at the office or in hallway, or take you by the hand in front of everybody? Never," he answered.

She laughed really loudly too, happy as never before, ready to live like that for the rest of her life...

Yes, she knew difficult days were ahead of her facing Jack with the truth, and her family, his, people at the FBI… but none of it mattered, not as long as she had the strength of her soul mate walking beside her down that difficult road.

That person that wouldn't settled with them just being a body on a bed next to each other, and had devoted himself to taking over her heart until she finally became his partner for life.

* * *

So?... What do you think? Please, leave some comments...


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